(i) Technical Field
The present invention relates to elastic members, process cartridges, and image-forming apparatuses.
(ii) Related Art
An electrophotographic image-forming apparatus charges the surface of an image carrier such as an inorganic or organic photoconductive photoreceptor with a charging device, forms an electrostatic latent image with laser light modulated with image signals, and develops the electrostatic latent image with charged toner to form a visible toner image. The image-forming apparatus then electrostatically transfers the toner image to a recording medium such as recording paper, either directly or via an intermediate transfer member, and fixes the toner image to the recording medium to form a reproduced image.
A suitable charging device for charging the surface of the image carrier is a conductive elastic member.